Paul Krugman demands John Stewart Stop Making Fun of Him

[saxitoxin]

The New York Times’ Paul Krugman and comedian Jon Stewart are currently in the midst of a tiff over the trillion-dollar coin.

Stewart first took on the coin in a segment on “The Daily Show” last Thursday, joking that “if we’re going to make shit up, I say go big or go home” and suggesting it makes just as much sense to mint a twenty-trillion dollar coin or maybe just “find” a “one-hundred quillion-dollar bill” featuring a centaur and a unicorn as it does to make the trillion-dollar coin. Krugman then blasted Stewart in a Saturday column, “Lazy Jon Stewart,” for the show's mockery of the coin.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/201 ... 54234.html

[Funkyterrance]

John Stewart's humor is lazy though. Who are we supposed to be rooting for?

[WILLIAMS5232]

i don't know. i haven't done any research on this coin, but it does seem kind of fishy.

have we been keeping this coin in savings for a rainy day?
have we always had it just not knowing when/where/how to spend it?

i'm confused. i just don't see how stamping a coin and writing a trillion dollars on it is doing much good. isn't it kind of like an iou? if i understand it correctly.


this is what comes to mind when i think about it.

[Funkyterrance]

i'm confused. i just don't see how stamping a coin and writing a trillion dollars on it is doing much good. isn't it kind of like an iou? if i understand it correctly.

Well from what I understand, that's what we are doing when we print US currency anyway. So to quote the immortal John Stewart, why not "Go big or go home"?

[BigBallinStalin]

i don't know. i haven't done any research on this coin, but it does seem kind of fishy.

have we been keeping this coin in savings for a rainy day?
have we always had it just not knowing when/where/how to spend it?

i'm confused. i just don't see how stamping a coin and writing a trillion dollars on it is doing much good. isn't it kind of like an iou? if i understand it correctly.

It's kind of like printing a one Trillion dollar bill, but that would affect the supply of money (thus inflation). Think of the US 'printing' an extra trillion in dollars, and then using that to pay for goods, wages, and to service debts.

In order to work around this problem of inflation, the government could mint a one trillion dollar coin--which would not enter into the actual supply of money (thus not affecting inflation through such means). Instead, people would laugh at the US and not take their commitment to paying off debts seriously--and this could be problematic (e.g. US could be downgraded, interest rates on US securities may spike, who knows), but my confidence in the US would definitely sink.


Also, Krugman was totes in favor of boosting the demand for housing from 2002, which became a bubble that burst in 2008, so this shows how short-sighted of an economist Krugman can be.